My rating system (as applied to techno)

I don't presently give out numbered ratings because the goal of this series is to be exploratory rather than judgmental.  A large part of what I'm doing is exploring genres I don't know anything about, or at least don't know much about. So an attempt at fine grained ratings would be inappropriate. 

For people who are looking for some kind of evaluation, I'll point out that every post has tags / labels.  For content I endorse, which is pretty much everything so far, the label section contains a '+ ' tag.  For content that I'm actively not recommending (one coming up very soon) the labels will include a '-' tag.  It's possible that later on when I'm talking about stuff where I'm more knowledgeable or have a firm view on, I'll make it more precise ratings. For now, discussion will mostly be qualitative.  

A problem best spotted in advance

I recently heard a song play on my speakers and it was good and so my instinct almost immediately was to a write a post plugging it (which goes up tomorrow).  But then a problem occurred to me.  If I write a post every time I hear a song that I think is notably good, I'll very quickly write posts on all the songs I think are strong.  But I'm trying to cover a list of a hundred songs. Posting whenever something stood out would lead to a long predictable slow spell for the second half of the list. 

Two solutions present themselves:

1) whenever a song stands out, write the post for that, then randomly pick a song and write a post for that one also. This gives me wider coverage and forces me to write more posts. It also ensures that I check out songs that might be good if examined but which don't jump out if heard while distracted.

2) just bail on the list when I stop hitting songs that inspire me to write posts. What's the harm of missing coverage for songs that didn't grab me. 

As is often the case when two choices are listed, I suspect the best choice is a mixed strategy. So when ever I pick a song to post, I'll review a random song as well. When I run out of songs that I want to post about, I'll do a few more than drop this list and move on to the next category (albums maybe).

Listening conditions and Emerge

When checking out songs and albums I listen to them under a variety of conditions.  Simply because it's where I spend a lot of my time, many tracks will be listened to on headphones at work while I'm working and paying primary attention to my job and listening only in the background.  Other tracks and albums will be listened to on the subway coming to or from work.  The obvious disadvantage of the subway is being really loud and often distracting,so I can be focused on music but I can't necessarily hear as well as I would like.  Lastly some tracks I get to listen to on my home system. 

As far as home audio systems go, mine's pretty good, quality speakers, quality DAC, quality amplifier, files are high bit rate. Obviously given the variety of these listening conditions, sound quality, and attention there's going to be some random bias or error based on whether I listen to a track initially at work, at home, or on the subway.  I try to ameliorate this to some extent by just having things on the background in general so that I hear them multiple times in multiple occasions, but nonetheless the bias is going to exist.  There's not really anything that can be done to prevent this so I'm just making a note of it here. 

One impact of this bias that's very noticeable to me is that songs that stand out are going to get noticed more when they do something striking that causes them to move from the background and grab my attention. Songs get through when they have a loud chorus for the subway, or just a catchy part that sticks in my head while I'm doing other things.  

One song that has all those properties, loud moments, catchy hooks, and a propensity for sticking in your head is, the song Emerge by Fischerspooner  (Wikipedia) . Its number 24 on RAs top 100 tracks. The song is pretty quick. It has a satisfying build, starts slower softer and with less going on and then eventually gets nuts. The male vocals at the middle "uh huh that's right" aren't great, but the layering of male and female vocals at the end is quite satisfying. I wish the song was maybe another one to two minutes longer.  After the build up is complete I wouldn't mind another minute or two of payoff. 

Is this song good, or is it just a catchy one that stood out due to conditions? Time will tell. Although since its top 25 in a list of the best songs of the 00s maybe time has already told. 

Sources

When checking out new music, because I'm not familiar with the genre I need to find lists and recommendations of what to check out.  Based on Google search results (essentially the word of god) the site Resident Adviser seems to be a fairly comprehensive, fairly large, and decently  long-running list of techno music reviews, DJ pages, lists.  So RA will be my primary source for finding content. 

The next split beyond what site to use is to look at more recent content or to look for curated lists of older content.  The advantage of more recent content is the that you're more like to be able to see the bands you find ( does that even matter / happen with techno?). 

The advantage of curated content is higher-quality.  The best hundred songs of the last month will be better than 100 random songs that I pick, and the best hundred songs of the last year will be better than the best hundred songs of the last month.  The best hundreds of the last 10 years will be better than the best hundred songs of the last year. To those who don't already know, I'm an extreme quality kind of guy so this is a no contest. It's curated lists. 

The lists that I will use then I will be the resident advisory list of the top hundred tracks of the 00's and the top hundred albums of the 00's. 

A disadvantage is that if resident adviser has any biases, those biases will be very prominent in my search and will likely influence my final findings and the outcome of my search.  If there are other sites that are similarly well-regarded or useful I'd like to know about them.  However since I do not advertise this blog or plug it or otherwise promote it in anyway, it would be shocking to find any readership. So it's unlikely that I that I'll be able get any recommendations of better sites by asking my readers.  Nonetheless, nonexistent readership, if you know any better source than resident adviser for listings of top techno over the past decade or so please let me know. Thanks